1. Field of the Invention
The device and method of the present invention relates to monitoring of the utilization of a processing device in a computer, more particularly to the instant monitoring of the utilization of a processing device via a power supply without additionally burdening the processing device itself.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many commonly available general computing devices, such as desktop PCs, notebook PCs etc., incorporate several processing devices. Broadly, these can be grouped as processing devices with specific tasks, such as video and input/output (IO) processors, and the Central Processing Unit (CPU), which undertakes general computing tasks. Management of, for example, the CPU, or even multiple processors where applicable, is an important task. Utilization, i.e. how hard the CPU or other processing device is working at any one time, is a key measurable that may be used to initiate, for example, load shedding or cooling devices. That is, if a CPU is nearing maximum capacity or a significant load level, an operating system or supervisory mechanism may be required to rationalize CPU usage by suspending less important applications in order to execute more important applications more efficiently. And, because the CPU creates (and therefore must dissipate) increasing amounts of heat in proportion to increasing utilization, the speed function of the CPU cooling fan may also be slaved to this parameter.
Prior art devices and methods for realizing the monitoring of processing device utilization, exist in both the software and hardware realms. Software methods implemented in operating systems, or utilities used by operating systems to poll CPU utilization, are themselves applications and so have the disadvantage of additionally burdening the CPU in order to measure activity levels. As mentioned above, the CPU creates increasing amounts of heat in proportion to increasing utilization, so temperature in and around the CPU can be used as an indicator. Hardware implementations often utilize transducers such as thermal diodes, thermistors, thermocouples etc., however, while such means place no additional burden on the CPU, they do not return a level of accuracy comparable with software methodology.
It can be appreciated then, that a hardware implemented means of monitoring processing device utilization with an accuracy closer to that of software implemented techniques than that achieved by the abovementioned hardware arrangements, would provide designers with a valuable aid to providing optimal performance in computing devices.